1860—December.
THE RESIGNATION OF SECRETARY FLOYD, AND ITS CAUSE—REFUTATION OF THE
STORY OF HIS STEALING THE ARMS OF THE UNITED STATES—GENERAL
SCOTT'S ASSERTIONS DISPROVED.
Among the assertions made by the South Carolina commissioners in
their letter to the President of December 28th, there was one to
which it is now specially necessary to advert. “Since our arrival,”
they said, “an officer of the United States, acting, as we are
assured, not only without, but against your orders, has dismantled
one fort and occupied another, thus altering to a most important
extent the condition of affairs under which we came.” The person who
assured them that Anderson had acted without and against the
President’s orders, was Mr. Floyd, the Secretary of War, who had
instructed Buell what orders to give to Anderson, and who knew well
what the orders were. This brings me, therefore, to the point at
which Mr. Floyd’s conversion took place, from an avowed and
consistent opponent of secession to one of its most strenuous
supporters:—a conversion which was so sudden, that between the 23d
of December and the arrival of the South Carolina commissioners, on
the 26th, the Secretary boldly assumed a position entirely at
variance with all his previous conduct, and thereafter became an
intimate associate with disunion Senators, who had always, to this
point, condemned his official conduct. The cause of this remarkable
change was the discovery, by the President, of an act implicating
Mr. Floyd in a very irregular proceeding, which had no connection
whatever with the relations between the Federal Government and the
State of South Carolina, or with the subject of secession.
On the 22d of December, the President learned that 870 State bonds
for $1,000 each, held in trust by the Government for different
Indian tribes, had been abstracted from the Interior Department by
one Godard Bailey, the clerk who had charge of them, and had been
delivered to William H. Russell, a member of the firm of “Russell,
Majors & Waddell.” Upon examination, it was found that the clerk had
substituted for the abstracted bonds bills delivered to him by
Russell, drawn by his firm on Floyd as Secretary of War, and by
Floyd accepted and indorsed, for the precise amount of the bonds,
$870,000. The acceptances were thirteen in number, commencing on the
13th of September, 1860, the last one of the series, dated December
13th, 1860, being for the precise sum necessary to make the
aggregate amount of the whole number of bills exactly equal to the
amount of the abstracted bonds. Bailey stated that he held the
acceptances “as collateral security for the return of the bonds.”
What happened on this discovery should be told in Mr. Buchanan’s own
words, as I find them in his handwriting, in a paper drawn up
apparently for the information of some one who was entitled to know
the facts.
I do not recollect the precise time when I had the only
conversation which I ever held with Governor Floyd on the subject
of your inquiry. It was most probably soon after Mr. Benjamin had
the interview with myself, the particulars of which I cannot now
recall; but it is proper to state that I learned from another
source that acceptances of Mr. Floyd had been offered for discount
in Wall Street.
When I next saw Secretary Floyd I asked him if it were true that
he had been issuing acceptances to Russell & Company on bills
payable at a future day. He said he had done so in a few cases.
That he had done this in no instance until after he had
ascertained that the amount of the bills would be due to them
under their contract, before the bills reached maturity; that the
trains had started on their way to Utah, and there could be no
possible loss to the Government. That the Government at that time
was largely indebted to Russell & Company, and the bills which he
had accepted would be paid, when they became due, out of the
appropriation for that purpose. I asked him, under what authority
he had accepted these drafts. He said, this had been done under
the practice of the Department. I said, I had never heard of such
a practice, and if such a practice existed, I considered it
altogether improper, and should be discontinued. I asked him if
there was any law which authorized such acceptances. He said there
was no law, he believed, for it, and no law against it. I replied,
if there was no law for it, this was conclusive that he had no
such authority. He said, I need give myself no trouble about the
matter. That the acceptances already issued should be promptly
paid out of the money due to Russell & Company, and he would never
accept another such draft. I might rest perfectly easy on the
subject. I had not the least doubt that he would fulfill his
promise in good faith. He never said another word to me upon the
subject. I was, therefore, never more astonished than at the
exposure which was made that he had accepted drafts to the amount
of $870,000, and that these were substituted in the safe at the
Interior Department, as a substitute for the Indian bonds which
had been purloined.
I took immediate measures to intimate to him, through a
distinguished mutual friend, that he could no longer remain in the
cabinet, and that he ought to resign. I expected his resignation
hourly; but a few days after, he came into the cabinet with a bold
front, and said he could remain in it no longer unless I would
instantly recall Major Anderson and his forces from Fort Sumter.
There were, as Mr. Buchanan states, besides the acceptances lodged
in the Interior Department, other acceptances of Floyd’s, as
Secretary of War, afloat in Wall Street. Of course, Mr. Floyd was
aware of this; and having been told by the President that he must
resign, he boldly determined to resign on a feigned issue, making
for himself a bridge on which he could pass over to the secession
side of the great national controversy.
The arrival of the South Carolina commissioners in Washington on the
26th December, afforded to the Secretary an opportunity to concoct
his impudent pretext. It is impossible to suppose that he believed
either that Anderson had acted without orders or against orders, or
in violation of any pledge given by the President. The orders were,
in one sense, his own; and as to any pledge, he could not have been
ignorant of what really took place between the President and the
South Carolina members of Congress on the 10th of December. When he
instructed Major Buell in the orders that were to be given to
Anderson, the Secretary was, in giving those orders, loyal to the
Government whose officer he was, and his conduct in regard to the
acceptances was unknown to the President. When the South Carolina
commissioners arrived in Washington, he was a man whose resignation
of office had been required of him by the President. He learned that
the commissioners were about to complain that Anderson had violated
a pledge. Taking time by the forelock, he entered a session of the
cabinet on the evening of the 27th, the next day after the arrival
of the commissioners, and, in a discourteous and excited manner,
read to the President and his colleagues a paper which, on the 29th,
he embodied in a letter of resignation, that read as follows:
[SECRETARY FLOYD TO THE PRESIDENT.]
WAR DEPARTMENT, December 29th, 1860.
SIR:—
On the evening of the 27th instant, I read the following paper to
you, in the presence of the cabinet:
“COUNCIL CHAMBER, EXECUTIVE MANSION, }
“DECEMBER 27TH, 1860. }
SIR:—
“It is evident now, from the action of the commander at Fort
Moultrie, that the solemn pledges of this Government have been
violated by Major Anderson. In my judgment, but one remedy is now
left us by which to vindicate our honor and prevent civil war. It
is in vain now to hope for confidence on the part of the people of
South Carolina in any further pledges as to the action of the
military. One remedy only is left, and that is to withdraw the
garrison from the harbor of Charleston altogether. I hope the
President will allow me to make that order at once. This order, in
my judgment, can alone prevent bloodshed and civil war.
“JOHN B. FLOYD,
“Secretary of War.
“TO THE PRESIDENT.”
I then considered the honor of the administration pledged to
maintain the troops in the position they occupied; for such had
been the assurances given to the gentlemen of South Carolina who
had a right to speak for her. South Carolina, on the other hand,
gave reciprocal pledges that no force should be brought by them
against the troops or against the property of the United States.
The sole object of both parties to these reciprocal pledges was to
prevent collision and the effusion of blood, in the hope that some
means might be found for a peaceful accommodation of the existing
troubles, the two Houses of Congress having both raised committees
looking to that object.
Thus affairs stood, until the action of Major Anderson, taken
unfortunately while commissioners were on their way to this
capital on a peaceful mission, looking to the avoidance of
bloodshed, has complicated matters in the existing manner. Our
refusal, or even delay, to place affairs back as they stood under
our agreement, invites collision, and must inevitably inaugurate
civil war in our land. I can not consent to be the agent of such a
calamity.
I deeply regret to feel myself under the necessity of tendering to
you my resignation as Secretary of War, because I can no longer
hold it, under my convictions of patriotism, nor with honor,
subjected as I am to the violation of solemn pledges and plighted
faith.
With the highest personal regard, I am most truly yours,
JOHN B. FLOYD.
In a subsequent note to the President, Mr. Floyd offered to perform
the duties of the War Department until his successor had been
appointed. Without taking any notice of this offer, and with the
contemptuous silence that could alone have followed such conduct,
the President instantly accepted his resignation, and Postmaster
General Holt was transferred to the War Department _ad interim_.
Thus passed out of the service of the United States John B. Floyd,
once, like his father, Governor of Virginia. He was a man fitted by
nature, by education, and by position, for better things than such
an ending of an official career. He was no secessionist from
conviction, and until the discovery of his irregular acts in issuing
acceptances of his Department, he never pretended to be. He seems to
have been stung by a consciousness that his letter of resignation
was in a bad tone. On the 30th of December he addressed to the
President a letter of apology, which, so far as I know, remained
unanswered.
[MR. FLOYD TO THE PRESIDENT.]
WASHINGTON, December 30th, 1860.
MY DEAR SIR:—
I understand from General Jefferson Davis that you regard my
letter of resignation as offensive to you. I beg to assure you
that I am deeply grieved by this intelligence. Nothing could have
been further from my wish, and nothing more repugnant to my
feelings. If there is any sentence or expression which you regard
in that light, I will take sincere pleasure in changing it. The
facts and the ideas alone were in my mind when I penned the
letter, and I repeat that nothing could have been further from my
intention than to wound your feelings. My friendship for you has
been and is sincere and unselfish. I have never been called upon
by an imperious sense of duty to perform any act which has given
me so much pain, as to separate myself from your administration,
and this feeling would be greatly aggravated by the belief that in
this separation I had said anything which could give you pain or
cause of offence.
I beg to assure you that I am very truly and sincerely your
friend,
JOHN B. FLOYD.
But justice must be done to Mr. Floyd, badly as he conducted himself
after the discovery of his irregular and unauthorized acceptances of
drafts on his Department. The impression has long prevailed among
the people of the North that the Confederate States did their
fighting with cannon, rifles and muskets treacherously placed within
their reach by Mr. Buchanan’s Secretary of War. The common belief
has been that Mr. Floyd had for a long time pursued a plan of his
own for distributing the arms of the United States in the South, in
anticipation of a disruption of the Union at no distant day. General
Scott, in 1862, took up this charge in his public controversy with
Mr. Buchanan, and endeavored to establish it. He signally failed.
The General, in 1862, thought that he had discovered that the revolt
of the Southern States had been planned a long time before the
election of Mr. Lincoln, and that it was to be carried out in the
event of “the election of any Northern man to the Presidency.” It
had become a sort of fashion, in 1862, in certain quarters, to
believe, or to profess to believe, in the existence of this long
standing plot. There never was a rational ground for such a belief.
It is not true, as a matter of fact, that at any time before the
nomination of Mr. Lincoln, there was any transfer of arms to places
in the Southern States, to which any suspicion of an improper design
ought to attach. It is not true that at any time after Mr. Lincoln’s
nomination and before his election, there was any transfer of arms
whatever from the Northern arsenals of the United States into the
Southern States. The political history of the country, prior to the
nomination of Mr. Lincoln and prior to the Democratic Convention at
Charleston, does not warrant the belief that any considerable
section of the Southern people, or any of their prominent leaders,
were looking forward to a Presidential election likely to be so
conducted and so to terminate, as to produce among them the
conviction that it would be unsafe for them to remain in the Union.
Even after Mr. Lincoln’s nomination, and after the division of the
Democratic party into two factions, resulting in the nomination of
two Democratic candidates (Breckinridge and Douglas), with a fourth
candidate in the field, Mr. Bell, nominated by the “old line Whigs,”
it was not so morally certain that the Republican candidate would be
elected, as to give rise, before the election, to serious plots or
preparations for breaking up the Union. Mr. Lincoln obtained but a
majority of 57 electoral votes over all his competitors. It was the
sectional character of his 180 electoral votes out of 303—the whole
180 being drawn from the non-slaveholding States—and the sectional
character of the “platform” on which he was elected, and not the
naked fact that he was a Northern man, that the secessionists of the
cotton States were able to use as the lever by which to carry their
States out of the Union. It is necessary to follow the precipitation
of the revolt through the various steps by which it was
accomplished, after the election of Mr. Lincoln, before one can
reach a sound conclusion as to the causes and methods by which it
was brought about. Whoever studies the votes in the secession
conventions of the cotton States prior to the bombardment of Fort
Sumter, will find that even in that region there was a strong Union
party in all those States excepting South Carolina, which could not
have been overborne and trampled down, by any other means than by
the appeals to popular fears which the secessionists drew from the
peculiar circumstances of the election. He will find reason to ask
himself why it was that in these successive conventions, rapidly
accomplished between December, 1860, and February, 1861, the
Unionists were unable to prevail; and he will find the most
important answer to this inquiry in the fact that it was because the
advocates of secession were able, from the circumstances of the
election, to produce the conviction that the whole North was
alienated in feeling from the South, and determined to trample on
Southern rights. It was this that worked upon a sensitive and
excited people. It was not the accomplishment of a long meditated
plot to destroy the Union.
But if there ever was such a plot, there is not the slightest
ground for believing that Secretary Floyd, or any other member of
Mr. Buchanan’s cabinet, was a party to it. It was, however, in
1862, one of the means resorted to in order to make the Buchanan
administration odious, that this charge was made against the
Secretary of War; and when it was adopted by General Scott, it was
supposed that his authority had given weight to it. He saw fit to
put it in his public controversy with Mr. Buchanan in the
following form: That Secretary Floyd “removed 115,000 extra
muskets and rifles, with all their implements and ammunition, from
Northern repositories to Southern arsenals, so that on the
breaking out of the maturing rebellion, they might be found
without cost, except to the United States, in the most convenient
positions for distribution among the insurgents. So, too, of the
one hundred and forty pieces of heavy artillery, which the same
Secretary ordered from Pittsburgh to Ship Island in Lake Borgne
and Galveston in Texas, for forts not erected. Accidentally
learning, early in March, that, under this posthumous order the
shipment of those guns had commenced, I communicated the fact to
Secretary Holt (acting for Secretary Cameron) just in time to
defeat the robbery.”[99]
Footnote 99:
General Scott’s letter of November 8, 1862, published in the
_National Intelligencer_.
The anachronisms of this assertion, when it met the eye of Mr.
Buchanan in November, 1862, and its apparent ignorance of the facts,
may well have amazed him. The whole subject had undergone a thorough
investigation by a committee of the House of Representatives in the
winter of 1860-61, in consequence of the rumors which had been sent
afloat after the resignation of Secretary Floyd. The new Secretary
of War, Mr. Holt, not waiting for the exercise of the power
conferred on the committee to send for persons and papers, threw
open all the records of the Ordnance Bureau. The resolution ordering
the investigation was adopted on the 31st of December, 1860, and the
committee were authorized to report in preference to all other
business. It appeared that there were two Acts of Congress under
which Secretary Floyd had proceeded. One was an Act of March 3d,
1825, authorizing the Secretary of War to sell any arms, ammunition,
or other military stores, which, upon proper inspection, should be
found unfit for the public service. The other was a long standing
act for arming the militia of the States, by distributing to them
their respective quotas of arms. Whatever was done under either of
these laws was necessarily done by the officers and attachés of the
Ordnance Bureau. Nothing could have been done clandestinely, or
without being made a matter of record. At the head of the Ordnance
Bureau was Colonel Craig, one of the most loyal and faithful of the
many loyal and faithful officers of the army. Under him was Captain
(afterwards General) Maynadier, as chivalrously true an officer as
the United States ever had. Without the knowledge of these officers,
the Secretary of War could not have sold or removed a musket. The
investigations of the Congressional committee embraced four
principal heads: 1st. What arms had been sold? 2d. What arms had
been distributed to the States? 3d. What arms had been sent for
storage in Southern arsenals of the United States? 4th. What
ordnance had been transferred from Northern arsenals of the United
States to Southern forts?
1. Under the first of these inquiries the committee ascertained and
reported that, in the spring of 1859, 50,000 muskets, part of a lot
of 190,000, condemned by the inspecting officers “as unsuitable for
the public service,” were offered for sale. They reported the bids
and contracts, some of which were and some were not carried out. The
result of actual sales and deliveries left many of them in the hands
of the Government. In speaking of these muskets generally, Colonel
Craig testified before the committee that it was always advisable to
get rid of them whenever there was a sufficient number of the new
rifled muskets to take their places, the old ones not being strong
enough to be rifled. In the spring of 1859, therefore, a year before
the nomination of Mr. Lincoln, as Mr. Buchanan has well said, if the
cotton States were then meditating a rebellion, they lost an
opportunity to buy a lot of poor arms condemned by the inspecting
officers of the United States.[100] The only Southern State that
made a bid was Louisiana, which purchased 5000 of these condemned
muskets, and finally took but 2500. One lot was bid for by an agent
of the Sardinian government, who afterwards refused to take them on
some dispute about the price which he had offered.
Footnote 100:
Buchanan’s Defence, p. 228.
2. In regard to arms distributed to the States and Territories since
January 1st, 1860, the committee ascertained and reported that the
whole number of muskets distributed among all the States, North and
South, was 8423. These were army muskets of the best quality; but
neither of the States of Arkansas, Delaware, Kentucky, North
Carolina, or Texas, received any of them, because they neglected to
ask for the quotas to which they were entitled. The other Southern
and Southwestern States, which did apply for their quotas, received
2091 of these army muskets, or less than one-fourth. Of long range
rifles of the army calibre, all the States received, in 1860, 1728.
Six of the Southern and Southwestern States, Kentucky, Louisiana,
Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, received in
the aggregate 758 of these long range rifles, and the two other
Southern States received none. The eight Southern States received in
the aggregate a less number of muskets and rifles than would be
required to properly equip two full regiments.
3. In relation to arms transferred to the Southern arsenals of the
United States, the committee ascertained that on the 29th of
December, 1859, nearly eleven months before the election of Mr.
Lincoln, and several months before his nomination, the Secretary of
War ordered Colonel Craig to remove one-fifth of the old flint-lock
and percussion muskets from the Springfield armory in Massachusetts,
where they had accumulated in inconvenient numbers, to five Southern
arsenals of the United States, for storage. The order and all the
proceedings under it were duly recorded. No haste was resorted to:
the arms were to be removed “from time to time, as may be most
suitable for economy and transportation,” and to be placed in the
different arsenals “in proportion to their respective means of
proper storage.” This order was carried out by the Ordnance Bureau
in the usual course of administration, without reference to the
President. Of these muskets, entirely inferior to the new rifled
musket of the United States army, 105,000 were transferred to the
Southern arsenals under this order. There were also transferred
under the same order, 10,000 of the old percussion rifles, of an
inferior calibre to the new rifled muskets then used by the army.
These constituted the 115,000 “extra muskets and rifles” which
General Scott asserted, in 1862, had been sent into the South to arm
the insurgents, who, he supposed, were just ready to commence the
civil war eleven months before Mr. Lincoln’s election. Colonel
Maynadier, in a letter which he addressed to a Congressional
committee on the 3d of February, 1862, said of this order of
December 29th, 1859, that it never occurred to him that it could
have any improper motive, for Mr. Floyd was “then regarded
throughout the country as a strong advocate of the Union and an
opponent of secession, and had recently published a letter in a
Richmond paper which gained him high credit in the North for his
boldness in rebuking the pernicious views of many in his own State.”
It should be added that no ammunition whatever was embraced in the
order, and none accompanied the muskets.
4. On the subject of heavy ordnance ordered by Secretary Floyd to
be sent from Pittsburgh to two forts of the United States then
erecting in the South, the committee found and reported the
following facts: On the 20th of December, 1860, nine days before
his resignation, Secretary Floyd, without the knowledge of the
President, gave to Captain Maynadier a verbal order to send to the
forts on Ship Island and at Galveston the heavy guns necessary for
their armament. Proceeding to carry out this order, Captain
Maynadier, on the 22d of December, sent his written orders to the
commanding officer of the Alleghany arsenal at Pittsburgh,
directing him to send 113 “Columbiads” and 11 32-pounders to the
two Southern forts. When these orders reached Pittsburgh, they
caused a great excitement in that city. A committee of the
citizens, whose letter to the President lies before me, dated
December 25th, brought the matter to his personal attention, and
advised that the orders be countermanded. The guns had not been
shipped. Four days after this letter was written, Secretary Floyd
was out of office. Mr. Holt, the new Secretary, by direction of
the President, immediately rescinded the order. The city councils
of Pittsburgh, on the 4th of January, 1861, sent a vote of thanks
for this prompt proceeding, to the President, in which they
included the new Attorney General, Mr. Stanton, and the new
Secretary of War, Mr. Holt.
With this transaction General Scott had nothing whatever to do. Yet,
in 1862, he at first thought that he discovered, early in March,
1861, something that happened in the December and January previous,
and that he interfered just in time “to defeat the robbery!” It will
be noticed that the General claimed to have given this information
to Secretary Holt while he was acting for Secretary Cameron; that
is, in March, after the close of Mr. Buchanan’s administration, and
before Mr. Cameron, Mr. Lincoln’s Secretary of War, had taken
possession of the Department. So that the inference naturally was
that Mr. Buchanan had allowed his administration to expire, leaving
this “posthumous order” of Secretary Floyd in force after Mr.
Lincoln’s accession, and that but for General Scott’s interposition
it would have been carried out; although the whole affair was ended
before the 4th day of January, on information received from the
citizens of Pittsburgh and promptly acted upon by President Buchanan
and Secretary Holt, without any interference whatever by General
Scott![101]
Footnote 101:
When this extraordinary blunder was brought to the General’s
attention, in his controversy with Mr. Buchanan, in 1862, he said
that the only error he had made was in giving March instead of
January as the time when the order was countermanded, and that
this error was immaterial! He still insisted that he gave the
information to Mr. Holt that the shipment had commenced, and that
he stopped it. It is certainly most remarkable that he did not see
that time was of the essence of his charge against the Buchanan
administration, for his charge imputed to that administration a
delay from January to March in countermanding the order, and
claimed for himself the whole merit of the discovery and the
countermand. He would better have consulted his own dignity and
character if he had frankly retracted the whole statement. But
probably the story of the Pittsburgh ordnance, as he put it, has
been believed by thousands, to the prejudice of President
Buchanan. (See the letters of General Scott, published in the
_National Intelligencer_.)